Over the past two or so years the public sector has seen an increase in service designers. One only needs to look at the influx of service designers in Leeds and other areas where they are looking at services in Pensions, and other verticals.
Given that service design works with the idea of placing the user/human at the centre of a service, and the main beneficiary; I’ve given some thought and wondered:
“Is the purpose or goal of service design employed in the public sector to get to more yeses?”
When we look at service design blueprints, and user journeys, often we will see a pattern that shows the “golden path”, a route where positive outcomes are framed.
However, this got me to thinking — sometimes, a user may get an answer that is akin to a “no”. Given this, the user may think that the system is poor, at fault or didn’t care about their issue.
The basic idea is this: If you got a “no”, does it mean you got a poor service?
I’m not sure. There may be very good reasons a user got no, but that doesn’t mean all services must be positively framed/goal orientated. But it’s an interesting question that I would like to follow up on.